Placing high importance on its relations with IOM, Vietnam is
looking to working more closely with the Organization on key
migration issues.

At a recent meeting between a Vietnamese delegation headed by
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and IOM Director General William
Swing and Deputy Director General Laura Thompson in Geneva, Vietnam
highlighted migration issues of particular interest to the
Southeast Asian country.

Among these were maximising the impact of migration on social
development, boosting more legal migration opportunities for its
nationals while strengthening their human rights, and curbing
irregular migration and human trafficking.

Vietnamese workers in South Korea, Eastern Europe and the Middle
East and elsewhere have been among those who have suffered from the
global financial crisis, facing difficulties in integrating upon
returning home.

The two sides have agreed that a new updated memorandum of
understanding would be developed and signed between the
Organization and Vietnam later this year that would take into
account Vietnam’s current migration realities and how IOM
could assist in dealing with them.

The Vietnamese Prime Minister also expressed his government's
support for IOM's active participation in the One UN Initiative in
Vietnam, which aims to combine and synthesize the work of the
resident UN organizations in Viet Nam and others such as IOM 
and the IMF and World Bank within a single planning framework to
better support Vietnam's Socio-Economic Development Plan and the
achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

Since 1987, IOM has been present and working in Vietnam which
held Observer status within the Organization between 1990 and 2007.
It officially became an IOM Member State in 2007.

IOM programmes and activities in the country have focused mainly
on family reunification with Vietnamese refugees resettled to
countries such as the USA; providing consular assistance to
Vietnamese migrants going to Australia and Canada; health
assessments of potential migrants; and countering human trafficking
through building government capacity to deal with the issue,
providing direct assistance to victims of trafficking 
and on pandemic preparedness in Vietnam's border areas.

For more information, please contact:

Zhao Jian

IOM Geneva

E-mail "mailto:jzhao@iom.int">jzhao@iom.int